Category: Fed Policy

The US Dollar and the Five Stages of Grieving

The US Dollar and the Five Stages of Grieving

Posted on by David Merkel

Recently I had dinner with a college friend of my oldest son.? It surprised me, but he was interested in how the US dollar was doing.? I likened the current situation to the five stages of grieving.

The first stage is denial.? As it respects the US Dollar, in the initial phases in the decline of the US Dollar, most foreign? finance ministers and central bankers are pretty happy.? After all, foreign exchange reserves are at an all time high.? Export industries are booming.? The government loves the exchange rate policy that keep the US Dollar artificially rich against the foreign currency.? The banks are flush, credit is booming… what could be better?? After all, you can’t have too much in the way of US Dollar reserves, can you?? (They never have to worry about a currency crisis again!)? The government is happy with them, especially since they are supported by the exporters.

Anger is the second stage.? The dollar reserves are worth less and less on a relative basis, and they keep coming in.? The wisdom of having a fixed rate, crawling peg, or dirty float against the dollar is questioned.? Goods inflation is rising in the foreign market, and credit creation is getting out of control.? The finance minister or central banker face the hard choice of revaluing the currency up versus the US Dollar, which slows the economy, particularly exports, or let the situation continue, and build up more US Dollar reserves.? (“What will we ever use all these Dollar reserves for?” they might ask in a moment of lucidity. “What if the US Dollar fell a lot further?? That would reduce the value backing our currency…? Why is the Fed loosening so much?? Don’t they care about the Dollar?”)

So, some of them revalue their currency upward versus the US Dollar, some reduce the basket weight of the Dollar, some let the peg crawl faster, and some do nothing… and the US Dollar predominantly falls in value.? Some finance ministers complain about the Dollar, and net exports to the US begin to decline.? This is where we are now, and I don’t know how long it will take to get to the next stage.

The third stage is bargaining.? The foreign finance ministers and central bankers are stuck.? They are getting pressure to lower the value of the currency against the dollar from exporters, and the politicians that they support.? They wonder if an intervention on the foreign exchange market might do it.? They call their opposite numbers around the globe, proposing an intervention to raise the value of the dollar.? Enough agree to do it, and the coalition of the willing does what they don’t want to do.? They sell their own foreign currencies, and buy more dollars.? The surprise works!? They caught the FX traders leaning the wrong way, on a day when economic news was going their way, they cooperated, and they did it BIG!? The US Dollar rises a full five percent. (“See you at the party tonight!”)

Only one problem, which is clear the next day to Finance ministers, Central bankers and FX traders alike.? (“What are we going to do with all the new US Dollar reserves that we bought?? We already have too much of that…”)? The FX traders pounce, and take the opposite side of the trade, and push the US Dollar lower.


Stage four is depression.? (“There’s no way out, and we got snookered by the neo-mercantilist exporters who got us to keep the currency too low versus the US Dollar.”)? The US Dollar is below the earlier intervention level, and there have been a few additional failed interventions, where the FX traders ate the central banks for lunch.? The US Dollar continues to fall.

Finally, stage five, acceptance.? The foreign currencies rise to sustainable levels versus the US dollar.? Inflation and real economic activity decline in the foreign countries.? They begin buying more goods and services from the US, and dollar claims are redeemed.? Inflation and interest rates rise in the US, as we have to produce more to pay off the dollar reserves now being redeemed by foreigners.? (Send us goods and it will pay off your debts!? Amazing how the US got good terms on both sides of the transaction.”)

Well, maybe.? It will take a while before all major trading parties in the world float/adjust their currencies to fair levels.? At? the time that happens, though, it will be obvious that the US is less important to the global economy.? The relative value of all US assets will be a smaller proportion of global assets, though it will still likely be the largest share in the world.? My view is this process to get to stage five will take no more than 10 years.? By that point, the hopelessness of Federal social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare, plus underfunded Federal and state retirement plans, will force benefit reductions and tax increases on the US, and crimp borrowing capacity, unless they borrow in a currency other than dollars.? There are five stages of grieving for US social welfare programs as well, but I am afraid we are only in the first stage now, denial.

That is a topic for another day, and not one that I am excited to talk about.

Seven Observations From Barron’s

Seven Observations From Barron’s

Posted on by David Merkel
  1. Kinda weird, and it makes you wonder, but on the WSJ main page, I could not find a link to Barron’s. I know I’ve seen a link to Barron’s in the past there; I have used it, which is why I noticed its absence today.
  2. I found it amusing that the mutual fund that Barron’s would mention on their Blackrock interview, underperformed the Lehman Aggregate over 1, 3 and 5 years. Don’t get me wrong, Blackrock is a great shop, and I would work there if they offered me employment that didn’t change my location. Why did Barron’s pick that fund?
  3. I’m not worried about the effect of a financial guarantor downgrade on the creditworthiness of the muni market. Munis rarely fail. Most of those that do fail lacked a real economic purpose. What would be lost in a guarantor downgrade is liquidity. Muni bond insurance is a substitute for analysis. “AAA insured, I’ll buy that.” Truth, an index fund of uninsured munis would beat an index of insured munis, because default rates are so low. But the presence of insurance makes the bonds a lot more liquid, which makes portfolio management easier.
  4. I’ve been a US dollar bear for the last five years, and most of the last fifteen years. Though we have had a little bounce recently, the dollar has of late been at record lows against currencies that trade freely against the dollar. I expect the current bounce to persist in the short term and fail in the intermediate term. The path of the dollar is lower, unless the Fed decides to not loosen more. Balance needs to be restored in the global economy, such that the rest of the world purchases more goods and services, and fewer assets from the US.
  5. I don’t talk about it often, but when it comes up, I have to mention that municipal pensions in the US are generally in horrid shape. The Barron’s article focuses on teachers, but other municipal worker groups are equally bad off. The article comments on perverse incentives in teacher retirement, which leads older teachers to retire when it is feasible to do so. For older teachers, I would not begrudge them; they weren’t paid that well at the start, and the pension is their reward. Younger teachers have been paid pretty well. I would not expect them to get the same pension promises.
  6. I like Japan. I own shares in the Japan Smaller Capitalization Fund [JOF]; it’s my second-largest position.

    Japan is cheap, and small cap Japan is even cheaper. I would expect a modest bounce on Monday.

  7. We still need a 15-20% decline in housing prices to bring the system back to normal. There might be an undershoot in price from the sales that forced sellers must do. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into a self-reinforcing decline, but who can be sure about that? At that level of housing prices, man recent conforming loans will be in trouble, much less non-conforming loans.


Full disclosure: long JOF

Looking Backwards at the FOMC Meeting

Looking Backwards at the FOMC Meeting

Posted on by David Merkel

I posted three times on the Fed today over at RealMoney.com.? Here are two of the more important posts:


 David Merkel
Since the Last FOMC Meeting
10/31/2007 12:28 PM EDT
  • Canadian dollar up 7%
  • Euro up 5%
  • Swiss franc up 3%
  • Yen flat
  • Long U.S. Treasury bond up a few ticks in price ~0.1%
  • 3-5 year Treasuries up half a buck in price ~0.5
  • Yields on the short end fall 0.25%
  • U.S. dollar LIBOR falls 70 basis points, and the TED spread falls 47 points to 104 basis points.
  • The volatility index falls 25%, but all of that occurred on the first day
  • Five-year forward five-year inflation as implied by TIPS, has fallen 20 basis points
  • The S&P 500 returns 4.5%
  • Here’s the summary: Systemic risk has declined but is still an issue. The U.S. dollar is weak, because projections of future FOMC policy point to lower short rates, when the rest of the world isn’t going that way. Note the declines against the non-carry-trade currencies. Market stability has brought the carry trade back.

    The FOMC will likely cut 25 basis points today and leave a “growth risk” assessment in place. That’s what the market is expecting; anything different from that will drive any market surprise. At 50 basis points, the dollar tanks, implied inflation rises, the yield curve steepens and the stock market rallies, at least temporarily. With no cut, the dollar rises, implied inflation falls, the yield curve flattens and the stock market falls, at least temporarily.

    Well, let’s watch the furor at 2:15. If we get 25 bp, there should be noise, but not much movement to the close.

    Position: none — happy Reformation Day!

    		•


    		David Merkel
    Correction
    10/31/2007 3:34 PM EDT

    The FOMC vote was not unanimous. Governor Hoenig felt no change was needed. So what has happened so far?

  • Yield curve steepens
  • Equity market rallies
  • Volatility index falls
  • Dollar falls
  • Expectations of future Fed funds moves declines — fewer cuts anticipated
  • Long bonds fall in price, rise in yield
  • TIPS fall a little less, show a touch more in inflation expectations
  • Gold and many commodities rise; oil stays flattish.

    • All in all, a market that fears inflation to a degree, but is not worried that much about growth.

    Position: none

    Okay, I got the growth risk assessment wrong, but largely, my analysis of FOMC action has been on target.? As for my post yesterday that got a bit of play over the web, I would just like to clarify a few things.? First, my view does not imply permanent easing of Fed policy.? Quite the contrary, I am an advocate of a flattish yield curve under ordinary circumstances, because it restrains speculation, and tends to preserve a sound currency.? That said, if one has to deviate from my baseline policy, don’t waste time getting to your policy goal, because slow adjustments merely put off the time when the cumulative adjustment is enough to matter.

    As for the inability of anyone to call turning points: true enough, unless you’re ECRI — maybe we can outsource monetary policy to them.? But the idea of having a central bank presumes their ability to spot turning points, and take action.? If they can’t do that, let’s simplify the system, and move back to a currency board or a gold standard.? Let’s take monetary policy out of the hands of politicians, and those whom they appoint, and put it back in the hands of the free market, if they can’t pick turning points.

    As for the Federal Reserve being affected by politicians, perhaps Volcker was an exception, but during the Carter and Nixon years, the White House successfully attempted to influence policy.? Greenspan admits to being influenced on policy decisions by the White House as well.? If we need more proof, look at the prior loosening cycle, where the rates went far lower, and stayed abnormally low far longer than a policymaker following the Taylor Rule would have done.

    PS — I am a fan of Dr. Jeff Miller, though we likely disagree on issues like this.? His addition to the commentary over at RealMoney.com is a real plus for the site.

    How Powerful or Wise is the Federal Reserve?

    How Powerful or Wise is the Federal Reserve?

    Posted on by David Merkel

    This post will be a little controversial. I believe that most investors over- or under-estimate the Fed. There are two ways to mis-estimate the Fed: power and wisdom. With respect to power, the most common errors are to overestimate the Fed in the short run, and underestimate them in the intermediate run. With respect to wisdom, the errors are to think that they are the wisest player in the market, or that they are less wise than the average market player.

    My hypothesis is that the Fed is one of the brighter players in the market, top quartile, but not top decile, and that their power is quite great toward the end of the cycle, but modest until then.

    My first contention stems from the lack of scalability of intelligence in a bureaucracy. You can gather large amounts of information, and have bright people interpret it, but the large numbers of Ph.D. economists insures that the result will tend toward consensus, and not be that much different from the consensus of economists outside the Fed, which means that the Fed will miss turning points. Also, in a bureaucracy, political pressures often dominate those near the apex of the organization, which twists the interpretation of the data, as well as what is deemed to be data. (M3 is no longer data worthy of being calculated.? A mistake in my book; the cost savings were minuscule, and the measure told us a lot about credit that M2 does not.)

    Also, because of our political culture, there is a bias toward making it look like you are doing something, even when doing nothing is the optimal policy.? (We would likely all be better off by having Congress be a part-time legislature.? Okay, sorry, formally a part-time legislature… they have a lot of vacation already.? The same would apply to the Executive branch, but it would mean reducing the number of regulations enforced.)? So, even if the Federal Reserve is correct about the right long-term strategy, political pressure can force a different policy action, at least in the short run.

    The Fed is a political creature, and it prizes its independence.? The funny thing is that it often preserves its independence by giving in to the political pressures that threaten its independence.? E.g. employment is slightly weak, but present policy is adequate to handle it if we wait 12 months?? No problem, we’ll loosen policy further.? (We can always take it back later, right?)

    I would argue that no, you can’t take it back.? Yes, the Fed can reverse the cut later, but the effect is not the same as if they had not done the additional cut.? Here’s why, and this speaks to the power of the Federal Reserve: when the Fed lowers rates, more assets become financable at the lower short-term interest rates.? The lower rates go, even if for a time, the more economic players think that they can afford a given asset.? The effect is slow at first, because there’s a threshold to be met for psychology to change.? Changing the financing cost by 5% is dust on the scales; it’s not worth the fixed costs and effort.? Changing it 10, 20, or 30% is another manner, and cheap short-term capital will lead many to speculate and bid up asset prices, whether the assets are housing or businesses.? Economic activity accelerates accordingly.

    It also takes a while for policy to bite when rates are rising.? Homeowners and businessmen make adjustments as rates rise, but it takes more of a rise to make their free cash flow go negative, forcing unpopular decisions that may have large fixed costs.? Asset prices normally decline in such an environment, slowing down economic activity.

    My contention is that in order for Fed policy to have real impact it has to move the short rate significantly.? Time is not what does it, but the amount of the move.? Because the Fed moves slowly, the two effects become confused.

    Back to my original questions.? How powerful is the Fed?? Very powerful when they move rates far enough, but weak before then. How wise is the Fed?? Pretty smart, but hamstrung by politics and bureaucracy, which keeps them from implementing the right strategy even if they have it.? They don’t always have the right strategy; they still miss turning points the same way that external economists do as a group, and often their actions add to economic volatility by being accidentally pro-cyclical.

    The question that I have at this point in the cycle is how low the Fed will get before they get scared about inflation, and flatten out policy to see which effect is larger — deflation from overvalued housing assets purchased with debt, or inflation of goods and services prices.? They are separate phenomena, and can occur at the same time.? If they do occur simultaneously, what will the Fed do?? The US has almost always been debtor-friendly, so I would expect inflation, but that is just a weakly held opinion for now.

    Second Video on the Federal Reserve

    Second Video on the Federal Reserve

    Posted on by David Merkel

    Here’s my second video from TheStreet.com on the Federal Reserve.? This one is on where to invest from an equity standpoint.? There are two areas to look at.? Companies that benefit from:

    • Lower borrowing rates
    • Higher inflation

    In the first category are healthy financials, and companies with the flexibility to borrow short-tern and buy back stock.? I highlighted insurance companies in my video, but this could apply to other financials and yield-sensitive companies, so long as they don’t face any significant fallout from housing and housing finance.

    In the second category are companies that are exporters, and companies where the global prices of their products will rise in dollar terms, while their inputs stay relatively fixed.? This would include energy and most commodities.

    Bonds were not a topic of discussion, but I still favor foreign, high quality and short-to-intermediate bonds for now.

    TheStreet.com Video on the Federal Reserve

    TheStreet.com Video on the Federal Reserve

    Posted on by David Merkel

    While in NYC, I did two videos on the Federal Reserve for TheStreet.com.? Here is the first of them.? The second one should be published soon.? Please pardon my inability as I express myself, but it’s a fair picture of what I look like, sound like, and how I think (or not) on my feet.

    I got to see what a day at TheStreet.com is like, from the video facilities, to how coverage changes as news breaks (Merrill Lynch being the example du jour).? I got to meet several people face-to-face who I had never met before: James Altucher, Kristin Bentz (indeed fair-haired and ingenious), George Moriarty, Gregg Greenberg, Simon Constable, Farnoosh Torabi (of course), Mark DeCambre, and many other members of the staff.? Especially fun was lunch with my editor Gretchen Lembach.? I saw a few others that I knew (including James Cramer, who was in a good mood, but busy, as you can imagine.? I don’t think he recognized me.), but they were busy.? It’s a low key, fun, and connected kind of place; I’ve never seen as many monitors showing CNBC in one place, aside from some of the bulge bracket trading floors.

    After my time at The Street.com, I had an interview with a major insurance company in NYC.? Hopefully something will come of that, even if it is only a consulting relationship.? One impressive thing about the company that I visited: the offices of the senior management were the most modest that I have seen in the industry.? In any business, that’s a good sign; it shows that they are concerned about the shareholders.

    It is also possible that my relationship with TheStreet.com will expand as well.? I’ll be putting together a proposal for them, and we will see where it goes.? Oh, one more thing; if anyone reading this is short TSCM, do yourself a favor and cover.

    Tickers mentioned: TSCM

    Reviewing the Fed Data

    Reviewing the Fed Data

    Posted on by David Merkel

    Last night’s post got eaten by a loss of power.  It’s time to return to “FOMC mode” in anticipation of the meeting ending on the 31st. Let’s review the data as I see it:

    • Even with the recent loosening in FOMC policy, the Fed still hasn’t done a permanent injection of liquidity since May 3rd.? Growth in the monetary base since then has been anemic.
    • The narrow monetary aggregates have not been growing rapidly, even since the FOMC began its temporary liquidity injections back in August.? Even M2 has been flat.
    • My M3 proxy has not been flat, though it overstates matters somewhat.? Total bank liabilities have grown 4% since mid-August, which is close to a 20% annualized rate.? This has to be taken back a bit, because with the Treasury-Eurodollar [TED] spread around 110 basis points, liquidity from the unsecured Euro-dollar markets has diminished.? How much for US banks?? I’m not sure; I can’t find a data series for that yet.
    • The TED spread has retreated 65 basis points since the last meeting.? Things are better, but external dollar liquidity is still tight, which in my book means a TED spread above 60 basis points.
    • Off of Fed funds options, the odds of no change are 10%, odds of a 25 basis point cut are 70%, and the odds of a 50 basis point cut are 20%.
    • Since the last meeting, fed funds have averaged 3 basis points over the target.
    • The discount window moves aided PR efforts, but never amounted to much.
    • As measured by TIPS, five year forward five year inflation has fallen since the last meeting, but has been slowly rising over the past five years.

    There’s my data, now for the analysis.? Credit conditions have loosened, but monetary conditions aren’t loose.? Banks have been willing to expand their balance sheets, I believe partly due to the Fed loosening capital requirements, e.g.,? lending to securities affiliates.? Also, with the bigger banks, the Federal Reserve is talking tough, but not playing tough in bank examinations, because they can’t allow credit to contract that much, or their loosening policy will have little impact.? The smaller banks, and banks where mortgage lending could have a big impact are undergoing sharper examinations.? Part of that looseness is canceled out by the tightness in the Euro-dollar markets; the big banks are less than fully willing to trust each other’s balance sheets.

    My opinion: The FOMC will loosen 25 basis points on 10/31, and will continue to express worries over economic growth.? Though inflation is a growing threat, the FOMC will downplay that.? There will be a lot of trading noise around the news, but after the dust clears, stocks and bonds won’t have done much, and the yield curve will be a little wider.? TIPS should outperform inflation un-protected bonds.? The dollar will weaken to the degree that the FOMC hints that they aren’t done.

    Eight Notes on Insurance, Economics, and Value Investing

    Eight Notes on Insurance, Economics, and Value Investing

    Posted on by David Merkel
    1. Doug Kass over at RealMoney made the following comment: “The next shoe to drop will be the failure of a public homebuilder and a private mortgage insurer. The latter concerns me more than the former, as the markets are not aware of the economic implications of my view.”? An interesting comment to be sure.? Unlike other insurers that benefit from state guarantee funds, the mortgage insurers do not so benefit.? That said, in a concentrated sub-industry that has only seven players (MTG, RDN, PMI, TGIC, GNW, ORI, and AIG), one advantage that poses is that failure of one company will not lead to assessments on the rest of the companies, leading to cascading failures.? So who would be affected?? Fannie and Freddie would get a lot of credit risk back, as would any private lender that used the mortgage insurers to reduce risks.? Even some of the mortgage originators with captive mortgage reinsurers would take some degree of a hit (most of the top originators had these).
    2. Some younger friends of mine asked me for advice recently, and the question came up, “Should I invest in the market, or pay down debt?”? Now, we weren’t talking about credit card debt, which they paid off in full every month.? They did have a home equity loan at 8.5% fixed.? My view was this: with 10-year Treasuries yielding 4.4%, and marginal investment grade corporate bonds yielding 6.0% or so, a reasonable return expectation for the equity markets as a whole would be in the 8-9% region.? Add 2-3% to the BBB-bond yield, and that should be a reasonable guess, given that I think the market is somewhere between lightly undervalued and fairly valued.? My advice to them was to pay down the home equity loan, and once it was paid off, invest in an index fund, or a diversified mutual fund.? Until then, better to earn 8.5% with certainty, than 8-9% with uncertainty.
    3. As can be seen from my recent reshaping, yes, I do buy sectors of the market that look ugly.? Shoe retailers and mortgage REITs have not done well of late.? Am I predicting no recession by buying the retailers?? No; so long as the shoe retailers aren’t too trendy, demand for shoes is relatively stable, and these stocks are already discounting a recession.? I chose two that had virtually no debt, so I am on the safer side of the trade, maybe.
    4. Does buying a mortgage REIT mean that I am betting on further FOMC loosening?? No.? The mortgage REITs that I hold embed a pretty nasty set of assumptions for the riskiness of the safest parts of the mortgage bond markets.? While a FOMC loosening would probably help, I’m not counting on that.
    5. My value investing is different than most value investors, because I spend more time on industries, either buying quality companies in beaten-up sectors, or companies with pricing power, where that power is underdiscounted by the market.
    6. If we are trying to estimate the central tendency of inflation and eliminate volatility, it is better to use a trimmed mean, or median, rather than toss out volatile components like food and energy, particularly when those components have led inflation for the last 5-10 years.? The unadjusted CPI is a better predictor of the unadjusted CPI than is the core CPI.
    7. Personally, I think the next ten years will be kinder to “long only” equity managers than hedged managers.? There is only so much room for shorting, which is an artificial overlay on the system.? We aren’t at the limits of shorting yet, but we are getting closer to those limits.? It would not surprise me to see ten years from now to find that balanced fund managers beat hedge fund managers on average (after correcting for survivor bias, which is more severe with hedge funds).? It’s much easier and more effective to do risk management in a long only mode, and I believe that the virtues of long only management, and balanced funds, will become more apparent over the next ten years.
    8. I’m thinking of doing a personal finance post on what insurance to buy.? Is that something that readers would like to read about?
    Crash Remembrances

    Crash Remembrances

    Posted on by David Merkel

    On Friday over at RealMoney, I posted the following:


    		 David Merkel
    1987 Memories
    10/19/2007 5:20 PM EDT

    I was a young actuary when the crash hit in 1987, one year and change into my career. I did not have any investments at that time, but I had just bought a house with my (then) new wife. Few today remember that the crash of 1987 was the culmination of three separate crashes. In late 1986, the US Dollar hit new lows, amid massive intervention by central banks. In February 2007, I came down with a bad cold that sidelined me for four days. Cuddled up with the WSJ while my wife was at work, I concluded that the bond market was about to fall apart, so we accelerated buying a small home. Two months after we completed the financing, mortgage yields rose by 2% during the bond market meltdown.

    The stock market roared on, though. Through August, the market rose, and the earnings yield shrank. Bond yields remained stubbornly high; it was a great time to invest in high quality long bonds, particularly long zero coupon bonds.

    The eventual crash in October is no surprise to me today. Equities could not stand the competition from bonds, so the market slumped from August to October, until the pressure of dynamic hedging took over starting on Friday the 16th, selling into a declining market in order to maintain the hedges, and spilling over in a self-reinforcing way on the 19th. For what it is worth, there was a humongous rally in long bonds as people sought safety.

    Now, my Mom was buying the day after the crash. This is why she is more professional than most professionals I know. She bought solid companies that would survive bad times. I knew far more people who sold into the panic. As for me, I got a trial subscription to Value Line, and picked six stocks, which I sold too soon for a 20% gain, and didn’t return to direct investment in single equities until 1992. (I used mutual funds.)

    Since then, I have been consistent in plying my advantage in picking cheap stocks where the fundamentals are under-discounted. It’s been a good niche for me, maybe it can be of value to you as well.

    PS — no bounce today, kinda like October 16th, 1987.

    Position: none

    Now, should the crash have been bought? Yes, at least in the short run, even without knowing the verdict of history. The difference between stock and bond yields narrowed dramatically, and option implied volatility was making a bold effort to escape earth orbit. Beyond that, fast moves tend to mean revert; slow moves tend to persist.
    Now, my knowledge of the markets was rather crude back in 1987, so I never would have caught those then; nor did most commentators at the time. People were too scared to be rational. Even the FOMC blinked, with a neophyte Greenspan, with no serious crisis imminent, thus beginning his career of throwing liquidity at small problems, and leaving the consequences for later.

    Well, at least I bought the lows in 2002. That event was similar, but not nearly as short-run severe as 1987, though it had the “strength” of longer duration as a bear market.

    Before I close for the evening, I would like to mention that I will have the portfolio reshaping complete on Monday, and watch for it here first. As an aside, there are a lot of cheap small cap shoe retailers, and a lot of cheap general and apparel retailers also. I don’t normally buy retailers, but this time things are too cheap. Expect to see me buy one.

    Society of Actuaries Presentation

    Society of Actuaries Presentation

    Posted on by David Merkel

    Finishing off the presentation proved to be harder than I estimated, together with all of my other duties.? Well, it’s done now, and available for your review here.? For those looking at one of the non-PDF versions, you might be able to see the notes for my talk as well.

     

    I’m writing this before I give the talk.? If I had it to do all over again, I would have made the talk less ambitious.? Then again, of the four topics that I offered them, they picked the most ambitious one.? When you look at the talk, you’ll see that it is a summary of the macroeconomic views that frame my investment decisions.? The presentation will run 40 minutes or so, plus Q&A.? Reading it is faster. 🙂

     

    Enjoy it, give me feedback, and I’ll be back to normal blogging Monday evening.

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